


Trust: A Trainee's Manual on Wardrobe Malfunction and Personal Armory

by Rhinocio



Series: The Homeworld T Series [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Nonbinary Ruby, Origin Story, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4148877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinocio/pseuds/Rhinocio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sapphire, from the moment she was “born”, has accepted the status quo without argument. She is one of thousands, and hardly as valuable as a corundum would once have been considered; being defective is the cherry on top of her less than stellar life. But a red fist wrapped in flames is having none of her apathy, and its owner has more than enough determination to change her views whilst fighting for their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust: A Trainee's Manual on Wardrobe Malfunction and Personal Armory

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Dansk available: [Tillid: En Lærlings Manual til Garderobedefekt og Personligt Våbenkammer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5052262) by [Vodnici](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodnici/pseuds/Vodnici)



> Firstly, it's always been important to me that fandom relationships be portrayed as realistically as possible – that is, they don't fix everything. Too often love is seen as the end-all-be-all in fanfiction, with struggles melting away the moment one character accepts their feelings for another. So, as fans of these series may have already noticed, Rubes and Sapph and many of the minor individuals have biases against others and don't always treat their partners in the nicest of ways. They also go through a lot of shit, despite and because of their love for each other. This is true of a certain pink queen who makes a cameo in this story as well; Rose is not perfect, and there's no way she was always as sweet and compassionate as we know her now. People grow, people learn, and people change.
> 
> Secondly, as with its predecessors, this fanfiction uses they/them/themself pronouns for Ruby. This is in no way meant to be masculinizing or otherwise alter your perception of the character. It's mostly personal preference, some well-needed representation for those outside the gender binary, a way to make scenes with many female-designated characters more comprehensible, and, at this point, done for the sake of consistency.
> 
> Thirdly, this story has a lot of scene changes, and I'm not sure how clearly defined they are. Feedback would mean a lot. I feel the need to apologize for all the crying, also. I swear it wasn't my intention for this series to be so weepy.
> 
> Finally, though I want to sincerely thank everyone who's read and gushed about this series, this installment is dedicated to the Homoloaf Squad and Sin Brigade (you trash), especially [Jen-iii](http://jen-iii.tumblr.com/), who's been extremely insistent that I write more of these and who's made absolutely stunning art for _Trial_. Words can't even express how beautiful they are or how much the support means to me. You're the best.

  
  


When Sapphire thought of the planet she was made on, she thought of violence.

Somewhere in the present the lean blue gem could feel her eyelashes dancing, and was aware of cool air on her face. But her vision was aeons away, wreathed in the memory of smothering heat and darkness. She was not soft; no hair pressed against her lips or wrapped her shoulders like a scarf. She was small, and hard, and wedged in one place, pressed on all sides by earth. She could taste iron, sharp and enveloping. She could not remember how long she had been there, nor cared. She was safe. This was home, and it was all she knew.

Air was her first cognizance of outside, and it was hot. Hands made of metal gripped her with their claws and tore her away from the land that had been her mother, and later she would think, _why wasn't I afraid?_ But as the world came into being, so did she, and neither had reason to be frightened. The planet greeted her with indifference, and she it. The unpolished facets of her body saw red, heard angry commands, and gasped life into a physical manifestation of soft cerulean as it accepted the challenge of aesthetic. Sapphire came into being in billowing ripples, a tiny, quiet ocean in a sea of magma. 

She staggered, her long hair curling around her limbs with the motion, wrapping her bare skin like tiny fingers. The touch felt raw, too sharp. The blue gem reached awkward hands into it, pushed the long tendrils from her face, and sucked in her first unnecessary breath. She could feel her chest expand, and looked down towards the dry earth, mesmerized, as the soft curves of her breasts and stomach moved. Two clumsy, lean legs shook as they held her upright. Her thin feet, beyond that, looked so far away. Sapphire wiggled her toes and grinned.

 _I'm lovely,_ she thought, and a scalding wind pushed the sand piles at her feet into a bow.

“3588, Blue Sapphire,” a hand almost as big as her waist snatched up her arm, and Sapphire lost her balance as its partner began pushing and prodding at the rest of her body. The thick glove scratched at her skin, torquing her hips this way and that, at one point nearly spinning her completely around. “Gem misaligned. Palmar surface, right side,” a snort, and a sudden exposure to light, caused the blue gem to blink as the hand pushed back her bangs, “Ocular defect. That's new. Make a note. The minerals in this spot might be inadequate, and we don't want this happening again.” 

She dropped with little grace as the hand let her free, stumbling onto her behind. Sapphire first felt bewildered, and then, as the wind-blown sand slapped her across the face, ashamed. Her cheeks burnt, rivaling the hot air. 

But just as the bright glare of the sun above defeated her hair's attempt to hide her, curiosity won over self-loathing, and the blue gem let the world that had so roughly adopted her come into focus. Oh, and how big the world was! Hundreds of colourful creatures milled around her, and they were dwarfed by rolling hills of red sand, and those were nothing in the powerful shadow of mountains that grinned at her with jagged lips and spit liquid flame from their mouths. Beyond them, a dense orange fog blanketed the sky, allowing nothing but the immense, angry gaze of a white sun. Sapphire's petite body suddenly seemed so very small, and and the jewel in her palm hummed an unfamiliar rhythm, one of skipped beats and high frequency. She clutched the hand to her chest, soothing it with her wonder. 

“Sapphire? Sapphire!” 

The blue gem frowned. No one had called her by name on her birth planet. No one had even given the planet a name. CR899 was a molten world woven into one of the long arms of the Red Spider Nebula, inhabited by nothing and powered by a star that had long since expired. It served only as a mine for tricky minerals like chromium, and thanks to its volcanic body was one of the few places where corundums could be made en masse. The blue gem felt the soft breath of a wistful sigh slip from her throat. Once, sapphires had been a rarity. She would have been respected, matured in the white halls and startlingly tall temples of Homeworld, and adored for what traits the imperfections of her crystalline body projected onto the carbon version. But thanks to this planet, this cluster of stars, this galaxy named after a _mammalian body fluid,_ she was one of thousands. Her name meant nothing. Even her colour was common. Sapphire, for the first few minutes of her life, watched the gem with the massive hands assault fifty-six others who shared her name, and was bitter.

Then she saw the ruby, and couldn't be.

She tried her best to take up as little space as possible on the transport from her mining site, which wasn't as hard as the sea of other sapphires had made it look. Perhaps she was smaller in stature; her lips could kiss shoulders from their vantage point. Perhaps she was thinner; the hands that jostled her along seemed to wrap around her long limbs with ease. Perhaps her subconscious effort not to impose was strong enough that she had condensed her physical form. Whatever the reason, Sapphire had lodged herself comfortably atop the driving mechanism of the large metal vehicle, and watched the sandy hills pass in a silence her brethren didn't share. Though the instruction given to them by Commander Pietersite, the large-handed gem whom she had learned directed much of this planet's Kindergarten, had been limited at best, Sapphire felt no apprehension. As blasé as this red earth had been to her, so was she to her future. She lived, now – what else could anyone want with her?

The transport crawled to a jerky stop at the bottom of a particularly steep dune, nestling between several other carriages. Here, too, hundreds of people milled, coming in and out of glowing, inscribed buildings and conversing with each other in groups. Metal behemoths, made of crisscrossing beams, towered above them, like sentries over ants. In the distance, a marching squad of bodies moved with almost artificial rigidity. The formality of the entire scene was almost dreamlike to the newborn gem, who had spent many hundreds of years knowing only darkness. This may have been always happening around her, but she had never noticed. It was unreal, and she struggled to wrap her mind around it. The warm wind lashed at Sapphire's cheek and lodged sand through her hair, bringing with it wrathful shouting. She turned towards the sound, something like interest doing its best to define itself above her apathy. 

“You! The ruby!” Her gaze followed the furious march of a gem whose legs were strangely disproportionate to their torso, kicking up earth like great shovels with each step. The green tone of their skin made it look like their feet were plants attempting to root themselves and stretch their thin canopy of arms and a head towards the white dwarf in the sky. Long grey hair trailed behind them like a wispy cloud, and Sapphire wondered offhandedly if there were places in the universe that had such a combination of foliage and condensation. When she followed the trajectory of the plant-gem's stride, she had to squint, because the mass of bodies she could hardly see were blending with the scenery and each other. Red tones upon red tones in an assortment of sizes and shapes stood in a semi-circle around two smaller crimson gems, one of which Sapphire could almost distinguish due to their dark hair. “Not you, the _defective_ one!”

A roar startled Sapphire so suddenly out of her phantasmagorical haze that her breath left her, and as the dark-haired gem rushed towards its caller, their flaming fist screamed for her attention. Her vision sharpened, sound ripped through the white noise of the wind, and she lost complete awareness of her body. The tiny gem – for she could see now that they were hardly the height of the plant-creature's knees – was a mass of noise and fury, their left side glowing so intensely with such an angry scarlet light that it rivaled the streams of magma surrounding them. Their body swung in wide arcs, limbs battering whatever resistance they found, and the larger gem, for all their size, struggled to defend. They screamed back at the ruby, arms flailing. Before her Sapphire witnessed what could only be called a fight of indignation: two monsters battling for dominance, one screeching with livid insult and the other with aggravation, wreathed in moving flames that bellowed challenge even at the planet they fought on. Emotion traveled with the breeze and grasped Sapphire tightly by the throat as the plant-creature landed a massive kick into gut of the smaller, and she gagged as the tiny body flew backwards, driving sand high into the air with its impact to the ground. She became vaguely aware of the other gems in her transport leaning towards her side, frantically whispering to each other.

To her horrified surprise, the ruby stood, looking (from this distance) completely unfazed. They cried out again, deep and guttural, and rushed the larger gem. With time to prepare, however, the plant-creature could not be bested, and their massive foot made contact with the red gem's chest so brutally that even from this distance Sapphire heard the sick crack of internal structures breaking. With their long arms the victor lifted the ruby by the mop of their hair and flipped them onto their back, tossing the body with disdain. 

“Return to your gem, and reform properly this time,” came the sneer, and Sapphire's stomach clenched, “Or as well as someone like you can, anyway. With a _uniform,_ though I can't imagine you'll use it for very long.” 

Realization hit her, and the blue gem gasped weakly. She stared at the tiny red form in the sand, ignored by its siblings, contorted onto one shoulder, and implored their bare, broken chest to move. The world had very quickly established itself to her as large, and defined, and absolutely cruel. Sapphire had not had trouble following instruction after she had been pulled from the soil; whether it was her indifference to failure or an innate talent, when asked to create a cover for her blue skin, she had done so. Newly-made gems were currently unsubscribed to a particular faction, so they could dress how they wished, and she had chosen something that hugged her as closely as possible, because it was comfortable. The action had been mindless, for her. But here, she understood, was the consequence of ineptitude: a shattered, naked gem, their only adornment a head of curls. 

Slowly the ruby did reform, and Sapphire felt her anxiety ease, but it was a fool's relief. The body returned just as bare as before, and upon looking at itself, curled into a pitiful ball of silence. Half an hour into life and she decided no, she could no longer be bitter, because such a feeling was a privilege Sapphire didn't want to own. She was one of thousands of fairly identical gems, but she could have been born a _ruby_. If anyone deserved possession of such a feeling, it was them.

“Sapphire, wake up!”

She had, and it was difficult. With her first hot inhale the universe had seemed amazing, but by the end of her premier cycle the blue gem was beginning to wish she had never been unearthed. Had she ever seen an animal, Sapphire would have compared the trek she and the other corundums made from Kindergarten to Homeworld as bovine; as a slow-moving herd they had been lead from their transport into long desert march to a ship of deep emerald, its gloss weathered away by the blowing sand. One by one they were cataloged by number, beginning somewhere in the 2500 range. Though she had yet to learn how to tell time, Sapphire knew her wait was long; were she organic, her skin would have long since burned (or melted off – who knew what white dwarf radiation would do to a softer creature?). From there she spent what for all she understood could have been a lightyear watching tiny particles float through the vast blackness of space, her lips pressed close to the thick glass of the clear ship wall. Room with heat and soft shelves had been indicated for retreating into gems and “sleeping” away the wait, but the idea of mimicking life as it had been in her birth-space was unpleasant. Instruction was given with basic pleasantries, but suddenly every word from the mouth of a gem in a leadership position seemed innately callous. Sapphire couldn't un-see the lonely, broken red body of the ruby that had been left behind in the sand. She pressed her forehead against the window and sighed.

For all that the authorities raved about the beauty and benevolence of Homeworld, Sapphire couldn't say she understood the sentiment. To be fair, she wasn't allowed the time to. She was rushed from the massive green ship into a long, tall bunker almost immediately, and cycles passed in a blur as she was trained in what would be expected of her. Generally, she was told, sapphires were categorized as in-field tacticians, as their size made them portable and stealthy (if necessary), and their hardness provided them durability against attack. Other, burlier gems were assigned to them for protection in more dangerous situations; her stomach dropped unceremoniously as her commander specified that the gems most often chosen were rubies.

“They're aggressive as a rule and have a tendency towards fixation,” Spinel explained, adjusting her goggles, “Their penchant for becoming excessively involved in battle keeps the enemy at bay long enough for the sapphire to escape.”

Her voice, of its own accord, murmured, “And then what of the ruby?”

“What of it?” the commander snorted. The rhetoric of the question echoed through the bunker like a laugh, and Sapphire knew she would never again bring up the subject.

But for a few sickening moments during her first mission on Trumd IV, the smallest of Vinotira's moons, the new recruit sympathized with the idea of abandoning a gem to their attacker. Having been assigned to a squad of Yellow Diamond's, Sapphire knew that she would be in the company of strong soldiers. Though her small stature had brought skeptical looks during enlistment, her standard hardness as a corundum made her an unquestionable choice for the physical demands that the Yellow-directed Authority required. The team that had accompanied her were visually imposing, with their great heights and muscle mass; only she and a citrine stood less than six foot tall. Naturally the two of them were seen as less that capable – for a gem of impressive size, a partnership with someone like Sapphire could only been interpreted as an insult to their abilities. She and the little golden gem, with pleading stares across the briefing room, had silently agreed to stay close to one another upon boarding of the transport to the moon. Initially this had been an easy task, for the larger gems left her behind in the wake of their large gaits. But it was upon assault by Vinotiran natives, those foolish, spindly-limbed creatures doing regular patrol of their planetary satellites in an attempt to defend them as owned by anyone other than the Diamond Authority, that Sapphire realized her weak loyalty. The alien species had long snouts with grappling appendages that made evasion difficult, especially for the large-limbed gems of her party. Though their numbers were close to evenly matched, the overwhelming dexterity of their whip-like noses was turning the battle unfavorably for the Yellow faction. Sapphire swung her sword with clumsy panic, doing not much more than evading strikes that managed to slip past the broad shoulders of a smoky quartz. It was upon her first successful cut into flesh that she heard the high-pitched squeal of the citrine in distress.

“No, NO!” with those frantic cries, Sapphire felt her fear swallow her, and stumbled as far from the fray as she could. Amid the dozens of black and yellow whips, past the passionate crystal glow of one of the more aggressive gems in her faction, Sapphire could see the thin shoulders of Citrine, wrapped in massive hands, being shoved towards the Vinotirans. Her weapon lay behind her, wedged in the dirt. Panicked golden eyes locked on her, and the blue gem swallowed the words that had almost trembled past her lips. They wouldn't have been heard anyway. Besides the roar of battle, many of the larger gems were shouting. 

“You can't just-!”

“Watch out!”

“Let me go! Onyx, STOP-!”

“It's _fine_ , she's defective anyway!”

Citrine's pained screams barely pierced her ears, smothered by a sudden furious bellow that scared Sapphire to her knees. Like deafening white noise, cries swarmed from behind her, and the reinforcements threw themselves at the Vinotirans with savage force. Thick yellow blood burst into the air like wet confetti, and the nose-tentacles nearest her were split into ribbons. Sapphire watched the carnage from somewhere outside her body, numb. Red light caught her attention, burning through bodies like a solar flare. As flesh melted around it, she identified the thick arms and dark curls of a ruby, their face coated in yellow and grin feral. Terror had paralyzed her, but her vision was locked, and her brain repeated one stuttering thought: _it's you._

Silence fell like a weight, bathed in exhausted panting. The ruby came back to reality last, their arms shaking. They straightened, turned, and kicked the shredded face of a Vinotiran, then stared at the ground with a grimace. It wasn't the alien they were looking at, Sapphire realized, when no tiny yellow gem appeared in the remaining crowd. The ruby spit, adjusting their headband, and Sapphire looked away. Shame burnt an angry hole in her throat.

No hand came to help her to her feet, but the blue gem knew better than to expect it. Simple words were exchanged between members of each faction, though “thanks” was never one of them. There was no point to graciousness; gems followed orders, and defended prospective Kindergarten locales with whatever force necessary. They protected what they were told to protect. There was no camaraderie here, as demonstrated by her team's sacrifice of Citrine for nothing more than a distraction. Besides, Sapphire thought tiredly, noting the blue stripes and insignias on the reinforcements' uniforms, under two separate Authority commands, they might as well be enemies. 

Still, something like relief badgered the back of her mind when she convinced herself to look once more at the red gem. They stood far from the main group, a dwarf among giants, their expression grave. Deep dark circles stared prevalently out from under their eyes, shadowed by a strip of cloth they had tied across their hair. With exception of their face, their body was entirely covered in layers of durable fabric. A tight suit with blue stripes on the sleeves, a thick vest with a high collar. Boots that gripped their large calves. Gloves with wide fingers. For all their lack of height, Sapphire noted, they were rather broad of structure. What had caught her attention, however, was that they were dressed at all.

It was the same ruby. She was sure of it.

If only she had been less sure. 

“You have clothes now.” The words had slipped from her mouth as unwarranted as bile after battle, reflexive and full of regret. The rage that filled the red gem's eyes was like the blade of a sword pierced through her stomach, and her breath rushed from the hole. She hadn't felt the right to scream as the ruby rushed at her, their hand lighting up like a torch, only covered her face with her hands and curled in on herself, waiting for impact. The world was cruel, and she was worse.

Sapphire's stomach flipped as she was yanked off her feet by her collar, gravity stretching her feet towards the ground she could no longer feel. Flames licked at her exposed neck, egged on by the amused jeers of one of the large gems standing nearby. She squinted past her eyelashes and found herself looking into a scraped, muddy face, screwed up in confusion. The ruby was staring at her hand. 

Her gem.

“I'm sorry,” she whimpered, “It wasn't an insult. I'm just glad.” The broad fingers that had gripped her threw her like they'd been burned. Red eyes glared down at her, splayed on the ground, their fury contrasting sharply with a softness their face hadn't presented before. Their jaw was slack, and the furrows across their nose had disappeared. They swallowed. Shock? No, Sapphire thought, pushing herself onto her hands, _fear._

“Come _on_ , Sapphire!”

The next time she saw that face, it was behind the shining edge of a blade, and it was once again tight with thinly-restrained displeasure. The call to begin echoed from behind her, and Sapphire bowed. The ruby didn't look away, and dipped their head only a fraction. So much for custom. On either side of them, the songs of metal on metal filled the hall in disjointed harmony with shouts and grunts. She held out her sword.

A brief tap, and the match began. The ruby launched towards her, weapon arm swinging, brute force slamming down her attempts at blocks. Within the limited confines of their arena, guarded with barriers of blue light, retreat would be pointless, so Sapphire tried her best to press a strike at the red gem's open side, but the strange way they held the blade – upside down, as if they intended to slice her from pelvis to skull – had confused her usual tactic. Their sword whipped at the hilt of hers, knocking it askew. Her hands stung with the reverberation.

“You're terrible with a sword.” 

Sapphire ground her teeth and struck with as much force as she could muster, sacrificing proper form in her anger. The ruby hardly had to lean out of the way; their bladed forearm stopping her weapon in its tracks. They began towards her once more, and the blue gem ducked and spun, moving away from the wall that had so quickly crept up behind her. She felt very much like furious prey, searching her predator frantically for weaknesses because she knew there was no exit. She tried a stab, but the ruby dodged to one side. A thrust from below, but their blade was too fast. At least the red gem wasn't stalking her; they'd worked up nearly as much of a sweat as her flustered flailing had.

“I'm serious,” they said, sword-arm relaxing by their side. Their mouth scrunched up on one side of their face, and though the dark circles under their eyes radiated anything but friendliness, Sapphire suddenly realized they weren't mocking her, but trying to help. “It's not a good weapon for you.”

“Fresh coming from the gem holding theirs backwards,” she huffed, the tip of her sword falling onto the gold and white tile, “Somebody hits it the right way and they'll take your arm off.” Bemusement flashed across the ruby's face. 

“Maybe, but it wouldn't be you,” with a grunt the red gem stabbed their blade into the floor (obviously thousand year old architecture wasn't that impressive to them), then raised their fists, gesturing them at her expectantly. This was supposed to be a practice with objects, not hand-to-hand, argued a small voice in Sapphire's head, but then again, her training of the latter wasn't multi-faction. Memory of knuckles that burnt through flesh slapped the voice, and guilt in the shape of golden eyes strangled it. The blue gem tossed her weapon behind her. Perhaps Ruby could teach her something.

The gems around them payed little mind to their brawling, locked in their own cubicles. Their shouts blended flawlessly with the voices of three hundred others. The red gem taught in no way Sapphire had experienced before; this lesson had no preceding tutorial, no visual theory for proper form or equation of angles. Instruction was laced with the roars of incoming strikes, reminding her to cover her head, to bash using the swing of her hips, to keep her feet planted and watch shoulders for movement, not eyes. She had always been good at the standard scholarly format, but this was almost easier. Her muscles adopted the movements with confidence words had never installed. Adrenaline pushed a barking laugh past her teeth as she swept alongside a fist, and she thought she saw surprise brighten Ruby's features as her knuckles connected with their ribs, backed with the energy of her torque. The red gem keeled forward, rubbing at their gut, and used the momentum to slide behind her. Thick fingers gave her ponytail a tug.

“Do that again.”

The sky-scraping ceiling of the hall they practiced in became as far away as the haze of Homeworld's atmosphere; the noise around them dulled in Sapphire's ears until it could have been the pleasant whisper of Eritian wind. Even the humming cerulean barrier that caged her with this stocky gem blurred out of her vision. Every bit of her attention had locked on Ruby's movements, time slowing as she studied the lean of their weight and the positioning of their feet. A tilt to one side indicated a wide-arcing punch; a shift in the shoulders meant a jab. Don't watch their eyes, she reminded herself, finding it all the more difficult as the red gem lost themself in the battle and their features began to soften. Their pert nose still scrunched, but with concentration, not anger; their thin lips were almost smiling. She had even noted their thick, long eyelashes before reality booted her in the knee. A strange sound choked out from the red gem as Sapphire hopped on one foot, cursing, and she registered suddenly that it was a _laugh_. Startled, she looked up, hand still pressed to her shin, and Ruby's face quickly composed itself. Determined righteousness welled up in the blue gem's core, and she stood, fists prompting, willing to fight until the bitterness that this ruby so lawfully owned pissed off for good. With a nod, they began again.

It wasn't until they were both sprawled on the tile, Sapphire wincing at the blunt trauma to her knees and Ruby spitting out strands of aquamarine hair, that she grasped the idea that someone might be watching them. She had, of her own development, figured out a way to use the red gem's momentum against them, and had sent the both of them (because, blast it, she hadn't locked her stance) flying with minimal effort into the area wall. With more practice, it could become an effective technique, especially against larger creatures whose centre of gravity was above hers. Ruby seemed to think the same way, because they quickly propped themself onto their hands. 

“How did you do that?” they demanded, and the question echoed in a voice neither of them recognized. They looked up, and their visitor could have dumped liquid nitrogen over them for the cold horror that spread through Sapphire's bones. A gem easily four times her size stood over them, hands folded delicately over her pronounced stomach. Curls of sharp pink cascaded all around her, ending in wide points. Though her uniform was mostly unadorned, glossy silver armor glinted with the blue light of the barrier. The heavy boots that stood mere inches from Sapphire's head could easily take it off with the slightest of kicks. Her mouth went dry. Never had she met this gem, but there was no doubting who she was, even without seeing the perfectly faceted pink gem hidden behind her palms.

“Sir!” Ruby had pushed themself to their feet gracelessly, throwing a salute against the ruffled puff of their hair. Pink Diamond nodded incrementally towards them, then looked back at Sapphire, who had not, though her mind was screaming at her, managed to stand. 

“How _did_ you do that? Sapphires aren't particularly strong. I would think a ruby could have easily bested you by now,” the gem leader threw a suspicious glance at the red gem, who swallowed thickly. She looked down over the rounded curve of her nose, noting the coloured bands on their clothes. “That kind of strength would be wasted on log work. Sapphire, you will report to Yellow Diamond's third squadron immediately tomorrow, and instructed in scouting. As for you,” she said, turning back to the other, “I am disappointed. You were made to protect sapphires, not fight them, and you paused quite often amidst your attack. Your inability to commit to the finality of battle concerns me. I feel it would be dangerous to assign you as a solo tactical defenseman. I will inform Sodalite of a new addition to her patrol team – perhaps you would do better with partners to cover your blind spots.”

Nausea twisted every fiber within her body as she acknowledged the command. Pink Diamond's heavy steps pounded in her head long after the gem had left them. The barrier wall thrummed and then shattered as Ruby struck it, and Sapphire nearly threw up when she saw the red gem's face, flushed with embarrassment and eyes watering. This wasn't what she wanted. Not at all. The world was cruel, and even when she tried to fight it, she was worse.

“ _Sapphire!_ ”

It was to her surprise, then, when her (admittedly terrible) sparring with a large amethyst four cycles later was interrupted by a loud knock and shout from behind her, and the angry glare of red eyes stabbed up at her opponent. Sapphire watched dumbly, her sword loose in her grip, confusion and relief arguing within her. The two gems debated, puffing their chests at each other, and eventually the amethyst conceded, throwing their blade past her and stomping out of the arena, shoving Ruby as they went. The red gem snorted and slapped the barrier back to life, then posed themself in front of her, fists raised. The game began again.

Anxiety had wedged itself comfortably in Sapphire's sternum, unalleviated by the punches that made it past her forearms. Though the red gem's willingness to train with her once more should have indicated forgiveness, she could not escape the guilt that had made itself a nest next to the pleading eyes of Citrine. Ruby's face was flat of expression; their body forfeited no emotion. She dodged an elbow aimed for her cheekbone and weakly struck at ribs, her hips unwilling to back the motion. In a blur, Ruby was behind her, body flush and thumb digging into nerves in her neck.

“What's your problem?” they asked, their voice gritty but not unkind. Sapphire winced as they pulled her closer, her arm skewed at a strange angle that was cutting off blood supply. “You're not moving right.” 

Her mouth struggled with the words on her tongue; “I'm sorry for the other day, that's all.” The stocky red arms dropped her quickly, and cool air rushed to occupy the space that their body had comfortably filled. She spun, ready to strike, but Ruby was far from her, their fingers knotted and frustratedly pulling their hair. 

“Why do you keep _doing_ that?” The tension in the air had become thick and uncomfortable; Sapphire couldn't stand it. She charged at her opponent, nerves scrambling her insides, and threw a punch towards Ruby's jaw, determined to distract them. Her knuckles grazed warm skin and wiry curls. The red body ducked, grasped her roughly by the hips, and then she was flying, feet spinning over her head. The ground clout her back with numbing force, driving the air from her lungs and filling her vision with stars. Rough fingers grasped her upper arm, pushing down with the body weight of a gem only her size but twice as dense. Flames licked at her nose. 

“ _How_ do you keep doing _that?_ ” She gasped, pointing accusingly at the jagged glove that had enveloped Ruby's left hand. Wide eyes stared down at her, and relief rained upon on her like tears as the red gem's mouth scrunched up and tilted to one side. They were relaxing. A quiet voice in Sapphire's mind wondered when she'd picked up on their emotional tics. Their irises searched her face, peering between the slivers of her bangs. The hand on her arm eased its pressure. 

“Have you ever been on the roof?”

“Excuse me?” Ruby let her up, and was settling themself on the far side of the tiny sparring ring by the time she'd straightened out her mashed hair bun. They beckoned her with a finger, and with a huff, Sapphire charged again. She sprung off her front leg, whipping the top of her foot towards the red gem's shoulder; a forearm, now devoid of its weapon, blocking her with ease. Before her equilibrium had fully restored itself, fingers had twisted into her hair, and the sharp point of a reinforced knuckle pressed against her spine. 

“There's a flat space up on the roof,” murmured the voice, and curls tickled her neck, “it's twice the size of this, easy. There aren't any mandatory assemblies when the second moon is up – you show me how you did that throwing thing and I'll show you how to summon a weapon.” She wrangled herself free, and Ruby was smiling.

“ _Sapphire!_ I swear on all the stupid rocks spinning around Beta Epsani that if you don't move I'm gon-”

With a drawn-out screech the blue gem launched herself forward, rushing the startling cold of the world that had roused her from her daze. She threw a fist before her, trying to beat away the prickling sensation of something too close to her skin. There was a shout, and the world was a haze of psychedelic purples and greens, sweeping across her vision and throwing her equilibrium into hysterics. She stumbled, and felt the coarse grit of stone under her palm, and her brain snapped to military-trained evaluation: Something was near her. It was cold and there was rock under her. She was disoriented. She was alone. Past her swimming vision, the colour of the earth blinked at her, and it was the softest of whites, flecked with green and yellow.

 _Vinotira_ , came the panicky thought, _I'm on the mainland._ Images of the horrific inhabitants swarmed in at her, their long appendages reaching, tickling her hair and reverberating with the pleas of a golden gem murdered by her ineptitude. How she had gotten here – did their ship crash? Had she been taken prisoner? Did these savages even hold hostages? – was no longer important, because she was doomed if she didn't move. Her back foot ripped at the ground as she launched herself to one side, lunging into a run. She grasped desperately at her back, but no sword holster met her fingertips. Muffled sound from behind her sent her gem pulse into a frantic flutter, and a frightened whimper squeaked out between her lips as she scrubbed at her face, trying to clear her line of sight as she ran. She'd be dead if she ran into something; as chubby as the propelling legs of the Vinotirans were, their tentacles had a long reach, and stars help her if there was more than one. They were pack hunters. 

As if answering her fear, something gripped the back of her suit, ripping her backwards with alarming speed. Her feet left the ground and the heat of what could only be a body brushed along her side. Her arms windmilled uselessly as she hit the earth and her legs thrashed, but weight pressed down on her, digging into her wrists. Oh, homeworld help her, this was it. Sounds barked beyond the haze, and her throat choked up with self-pity. She was going to die. Without knowing where she was, without doing anything to absolve her debt to Citrine, without accomplishing anything but making Ruby's life harder.

Ruby.

“You've got to have a _reason_ to summon a weapon,” the red gem had explained, swinging their short legs casually over the parapet, the blue light of the moon twinkling off their curls like tiny stars. Sapphire sat nearby, legs crossed, hesitant of leaning over the city that lay a hundred feet below them. She stretched her sore fingers and nodded. 

“Because I want to fight?”

“More specific than that. Because you want to _destroy_ something. Because you need to stop someone. Because you... want to defend what nobody else will.” 

“What are you defending?” Sapphire had murmured, noting their change of tone. The red gem huffed, turning their face away from her, a single finger scratching at the sand that Homeworld's dry winds had deposited on the roof. There was a long pause, and as she played with her hair, Sapphire had considered changing the subject to something radically different that might return the ease in which they'd been sitting after their sparring match. It had been so nice, crouched in breathless silence, grinning, bruised and scraped from having flung the each other's body around for hours. She had opened her mouth just as Ruby lifted their hand, and the reflection of the sky glinted off their gem and onto her chest.

“This,” they said quietly, and she stared. 

“Your gem?”

“And yours,” Ruby clarified, leaning back and sprawling themself on the shingles, their eyes closed. “And Iolite's, and Calcite's, and Jade's, and every other defect who was treated as less than everybody else just because their gem wasn't here,” they pressed the back of their hand to their forehead, jewel towards the sky, “or here,” the hand slapped against their chest, “or _here_ ,” the hand became a fist, and bounced on their stomach. Red eyes opened with a heavy sigh. “If I can summon my gauntlet and get to them first, then... then... I don't know. Maybe they won't die when things go wrong.”

Mortification had throttled the quiet blue gem beside them.

Sapphire roared. She couldn't die. If she had to make it about Citrine, then fine, let her black manipulating heart decide that she needed to live so she could protect the gem who had tried to do the right thing and save the little yellow defect. But in her core, Sapphire knew she was selfish. She wanted to protect Ruby, but not because of what they had done, but because of who they were. She wanted to be near the angry red being, the one other corundum among the thousands from her birth planet that had ever spoken to her, the one she had wronged but who gave her second chances, the one who had trusted her to learn and had believed she could do things she wasn't bred to do, the most pure gem she was positive she would ever meet in her potentially long life – who else could be so repetitively beaten and bathed in bitterness and turn on the world with only compassion on their palms? Rage built up in her, and the blue gem clenched her fists. 

_I want to protect them! I want to be better!_ she thought, _I want to be brave, like Ruby!_

When she swung her arm, hips twisting as best they could whilst pressed into the hard ground, her knuckles connected with something, and there was a loud crack to accompany the momentum of the body that was knocked off of her. She launched herself onto her knees, blinking rapidly, pushing her hair back, and readied herself to attack, then froze. Her right fist, shaking with the tension by which she clenched it, was wrapped in iron, sick points jutting off the ends of her closed fingers. Electricity crackled up her wrist, and the polarized air around it made the tips of her hair fray. The world around her was dark, and lit with blue, not the ill yellow of the Vinotiran foliage; in front of her lay a body that was certainly not alien.

 _Oh, may the universe forgive me,_ Sapphire's mind cried, as she dashed to Ruby's side. The gem lay curled in on themself, one arm pressed against the dirt and the other gripping tightly at their hip. Their legs twitched. Frantically Sapphire reached for their face, and their curls sizzled at the touch of her weapon. The red gem moaned, and tears prickled at her eyes. This was her destiny, dooming gems to deat--

“ _OUCH!_ ” Ruby screeched, then burst into pained laughter. Their hand rubbed at their hip frenetically, patting the singed fabric. The body unwound, twitching intermittently. The face that turned to look at her, squished between her shaking palms, was as jovial as she had ever seen it, eyes bright and filling with water. “ _That..._ is a way better weapon for you.”

Relief and irritation mingled and made Sapphire weak. Slowly she collapsed against the red gem, numb to their chuckling explanation – “I clocked you in the head with my glove and you got all weird on me.” Her legs curled into the curve of their arm, shoulders falling against the much broader ribs below. She pressed her forehead against their chest, and Ruby went silent. _This stupid gem,_ her mind whimpered, tears spilling over her lips, _they can't be this good._ Nobody was this good. Nothing in the universe was this good, and certainly not to her. A hesitant hand cupped her back and comforted her, and her iron knuckles faded away in a tired sigh. 

“Ruby,” she whispered, “You're lovely.” There was a drawn out pause, during which neither gem took a breath. The quiet murmur of the city below cooed at them gently, an unimposing soundtrack to the piteous moment. The soft trills of winged sand-creatures far away called amongst their own. It was as if a shocked gasp had rushed among the bodies of the cosmos, scandalized but afraid to speak, completely in wonder of the gem who dared compliment a defect. Thin clouds, a rarity on Homeworld, wiped over the moon, as if it too was abashed. A wet sniff broken the solace. 

“Why do you keep doing that?” came the throaty reply. Sapphire raised her head. The red gem had pulled their headband over their eyes, and the fabric puckered in their tight grip. Beneath the band she could just see the colour of one iris, pointed skyward and glossy enough to reflect the moonlight. “No one's ever called me by my _name._ ” 

When Sapphire thought of her birth planet, she thought of chances. She thought of a stocky, righteous person who took the bitter taste of their oppression and converted it to sweet intentions. She thought of the red light of a fist, and the blue burn of a second moon, sparkling off self-depreciating tears. She thought of the first time she'd been held, the joy of her first accomplishment, and the moment she realized the descriptor for her lifelong apathy had been “loneliness”. 

Pressing her face into the collarbone of her best and only friend, Sapphire acknowledged that the world was cruel, and she was no perfection, but there was one thing worse, and it was called _need._


End file.
